Bill Gates
has written off Google's Chrome OS as just another Linux distro.
Talking to
CNET Gates said that there are many, many forms of Linux operating systems
out there and packaged in different ways and booted in different
ways. Bill said that he was surprised people are acting like there's
something new. “I mean, you've got Android running on Netbooks. It's got a
browser in it.”
He added that it was hard to really say much about Chrome
OS, since Google has said so little about how it will actually
work. Gates pointed out that the more vague Google was about Chrome OS the
more interesting the press reports were.
Statements like “the browser
needs to act more like an OS” were sooooo 1990's, Gates said. The the
browser has already become an extremely broad concept, with all of the
plug-ins and other things that are now done inside a browser.
“Browser
has become a truly meaningless word... What's a browser? What's not a
browser? If you're playing a movie, is that a browser or not a browser? If
you're doing annotations, is that a browser? If you're editing text, is that
a browser or not a browser? In large part, it's more an abuse of terminology
than a real change," he said.
Certainly Microsoft will lose nothing from
another Linux OS system in the market.
More
here.